Summer Update

1.) I am still job hunting. I have applied for, on the low end, approximately 15 billion jobs. Out of all of these jobs, I did get a temporary unpaid internship. Woo! Actually, I am really enjoying it because I got to design my own project, which I will hopefully be able to use when I apply to PhD programs. I'm studying food access in an underserved community in south Seattle for ECOSS, an awesome environmental non-profit in the South Park neighborhood. I occasionally blog for them here. Go read it. My other job (the paid one!) is beginning to wrap up. While I'll miss the money and the intellectual thrill, I will not miss looking at the websites of nanotechnology
companies for hours and hours every day.


2.) My roommate got a dog. Her name is Harper Lee. She is adorable, even if she does whine when I am trying to sleep inappropriately late and she ate my favorite sunglasses. Her major life skills: being adorable to strangers, flopping, pulling the stuffing out of stuffed toys, eating peanut butter, wanting to eat land-otters (cats), sitting, snarfeling peoples' hair, and having allergies. Kelly and I also started a mini-container garden. Then we ignored it for like 2 months and everything died. Oh, well, we did get to make a couple of drinks with the mint.

3.) I just got back from the Third Annual Better Lover's Camping Trip. This year we went to Lake Wenatchee State Park. The weekend was filled with Date, Do, or Dump, the Alphabet Game, wizard staffs, and campfires. There was no actual book club book discussion because BLMVP and book chooser E-Thomps wasn't able to make it. Also, none of us had finished it. While the weather was not great, E-Schu and I decided to go swimming anyway. This is me running into the lake with the dogs. Don't be fooled by the sun; it was windy and cold. Michelle even came up from Portland and surprised us. She found us singing kareoke in a bar because, "It looked like the kind of place you guys would go to." I suffered minor facial lacerations and my beloved Chacos fell apart. The soles just peeled right off! Thank goodness for REI and its life time warranty. Free new Chacos!

4.) I graduated from Grad School! Luckily, I graduated into a wonderful job market, and I was immediately innudated with high paying job offers. Ha ha! Just kidding. Whatever. I don't have to start paying my loans until....October. In celebration, I went to Mammoth Lakes, California to enjoy the scenery, visit Yosemite, and do some mountain biking. Unfortunately, there was too much snow to do a whole lot of biking (they were still skiing in the bike park!) but I did manage to do a little. I only had to ride through one or two snow drifts. Yosemite was absolutely beautiful, but I wished we'd stuck to the less crowded east side of the park. Nothing like enjoying nature's wonders with 2,000 or so strangers. We did see a bear though. Everything is better when you see a bear. Unless it eats you. My favorite things about Mammoth Lakes were the Base Camp Cafe, eating 2 pounds of strawberries per day, the Mammoth Brewing Company ($7 growlers full of beer!), and the geology. Here are some pictures from the trip:

This week in my life

In two days, I will be wearing a similar outfit, complete with silly gold hood:




















In six days, I will be wearing a swimsuit, sitting in a hot tub looking at this:















Hopefully, the snow will be melted enough for me to do some biking.

What's happening in my life right now

1. I went on a moving-back road trip with DJ Kelly-Kel. Highlight: baby elephant seals. 2nd place highlight: beer.

2. Right this second I am sitting in a coffee shop, and they are playing Taylor Swift. Blergh.

3. I am back in Santa Barbara right now, finishing up with school, hanging out with Dan and his ridiculous mustache, and starting my (temporary) job. Note: Dan is not this adorable in real life, because of aforementioned ridiculous mustache.

4. Soon I will be heading to Bothell to housesit for my aunt and her dog and cat.

5. After that (if all goes according to plan) I will move into West Seattle and find a permanent job that pays enough to keep me in beer, bikes and fancy shoes, as well as pay off my staggeringly high student loan debt, but leaves me enough time to ride aforementioned bikes.

6. I also want a worm bin, and I've developed an expensive kombucha habit, so I'm going to learn how to make it.

I know it's a little blury, but....

Woo hoo!

I am so ready to be done with grad school

Don't get me wrong, I love learning.

In fact, if I was getting paid for grad school and not living in the land of the fake boobs and terrible coffee, I think I could do it forever.

But I have 22 weeks left, and I am so ready to be done. I think part of the problem that I keep finding awesome jobs that are hiring RIGHT NOW, and awesome apartments that are renting RIGHT NOW, and awesome, cheap Le Creuset kitchen ware for sale on ebay RIGHT NOW and I want all of these things.

Grrrr.

Dontcha wish your girlfriend was fun like me (big fun!)?

I am currently reading two papers. One is entitled "Tri-State Fertilizer Recommendations for Corn, Soybeans, Wheat, and Alfalfa". The other one is "Using Anhydrous Ammonia Safely on the Farm".

Here are some awesome pictures from these papers:

Personal protective equipment such as goggles, rubber gloves, and long-sleeved shirts are essential when handling anhydrous ammonia.

Skin exposed to ammonia should be flushed immediately with water. Remove contaminated clothes as soon as possible.

Look on the bright side.

My favorite thing about finals week is having an excuse for poor hygiene and bad fashion.

Procrastination

Things I Do Instead of Writing My Paper That Is Due Tomorrow:
1. Make itunes playlists.
2. Imagine Nicole wearing a crew neck sweatshirt with a picture of Ricky the Special Cat on it.
3. Blog.
4. Look at pictures of Barack Obama holding babies.
5. Try to figure out when the Salt-n-Pepa show is going to be back on the air.
6. Eavesdrop on the people next to me at Starbucks.
7. Remember really funny things that happened at the Barn.
8. Look at pictures of Basset Hounds and picture Brutus learning how to wave.
9. Calculate what score I have to get on this paper in order to pass the class.
10. Make a really intricate schedule for finals week.

Finals Time!

Sometimes I feel like, maybe, for a grad student, I do too much research on Wikipedia.

Then I think, "Whatever." 

Collective knowledge for the win!

I also love Dickipedia.

In case you were wondering...

...becoming a graduate student did not make "Physical Hydrology" by S. Lawrence Dingman more interesting.

This book was a required text for one of my undergrad classes. It is now a required text for one of my grad school classes. Judging by how the book creeeeeaked when I opened it, I didn't read it a whole lot the first time around.

As I am now an EXTREMELY DEDICATED grad student, I decided to actually do the reading. However, I have discovered I didn't not read this book because I was a lazy undergrad more interested in going to 80s Night than studying (well, not only), but because it is really, really boring. And I LOVE hydrology.

I was secretly hoping that the simple fact of becoming a graduate student would magically make all scientific literature not boring. Not true. A lot of it is interesting, but a lot of it is still boring. However, my AmeriCorps job did develop my sitting still being bored skills, which I think is an advantage in the reading boring scientific literature department.

In other news, the "hipster" (and by hipster, I mean as hipster as you get in Santa Barbara, that is to say, not very) coffee shop I am now frequenting is playing a really good 80s mix...oh, wait...there's 'Don't Stop Believin'!'. Never mind.